Professor Maxim Shrayer opens his Classic Russian Literature class by inquiring about his students' acquisition of the required texts, questions concerning the syllabus, and what he demands from them. After this is out of the way, class begins, and Shrayer's enjoyment of learning and love of literature shines through.
A professor at Boston College for 13 years, Shrayer is the head of the Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures department. "I am very lucky," Shrayer says, "because I am able to teach many different courses on varying subjects, all of which I enjoy." The courses he teaches, other than Classic Russian Literature, include Jewish Writers in Russia and America, a course on Nabokov, 20th century Russian Literature, Advanced Russian Grammar, and Exile and Literature, a course that Shrayer especially enjoys teaching.
Born in Moscow in 1969, Shrayer and his parents immigrated to the United States in 1897 after spending some time in Vienna, Austria, and a summer in Italy. He had already completed a few years of school and continued his education as a transfer student at Brown University, where he studied comparative literature and literary translation. Teaching, he says, is not something he pictured himself doing but rather something that was to be expected after attending graduate school.
"It is hard work, but extremely gratifying," he says. "Initially, I actually was more interested in becoming a doctor," he says with a laugh. He explains that teaching comes with the territory of writing and research and after grad school he discovered the relationship that exists between receiving a higher literary education and teaching.
In the classroom, Shrayer prefers to teach with the Socratic method in mind. "I much rather converse with my students than lecture them," he says. An accomplished and well-known writer, he says that becoming a writer was something he always assumed he would do. "I feel that each country has its own perception of what a writer is. In the U.S., it is someone who is expected to make a living off his or her work. You are trained to write, and that is to be a profession. In Russia, writing isn't expected to make a living. Rather, it is reserved for those who find it to be a calling."
2008 Woodie Awards
